Chennai, Aug. 17 -- Responding to the Special Attention Motion in the Tamil Nadu Assembly, Law Minister C. T. R. Nirmal Kumar said that the death of 19-year-old Amuthan, a third-year student at a private college in Coimbatore, was the result of a retaliatory attack between two groups of students and not a drug-related incident.

The Minister said that, according to the preliminary police investigation, a dispute arose between second-year and fourth-year students at around 8 pm on August 9, leading to prior enmity.

"Following this, at around 1:30 am on August 10, Amuthan and his friends went to the fourth-year students who had been involved in the earlier dispute and attacked them. They subsequently attacked some other students who were a...